A Good Time To Be A Girl

I read A Good Time To Be A Girl on Easter Sunday 2018, an appropriate thematic read. That is 246 pages of writing excluding 18 pages of references etc. It is an easy read and Ms Helena Morrissey deserves credit especially for being honest about the warts and difficulties she overcame with the support of her partner and her mentors, and with her own inner strength.

This is a book about an idea whose time has come, the idea that the prevailing patriarchal system hurts women and men, and it is time to change it. In that sense this is not your Lean-In manual of 2018 but something that exhorts you to think and act altogether differently.

Helena Morrissey is uniquely positioned to have written the book. At 35, she was made the CEO at Newton Asset Management, in an industry where women fund managers are still a low double digit number. Stewart Newton was her mentor. She has given birth to nine — and by all accounts, stellar (they are mentioned in the book with their views in relevant places; one of her daughters won a prize for Sanskrit, which is how she and I first started interacting on Twitter) — children. Her children of both genders provide an interesting personal crucible in which she has been able to observe how gendered views are formed.

In 1999, when the idea was mostly unheard of, her husband Richard became a stay-at-home dad but more crucially, as it comes through in the book, remained a strong partner to her. Ms Morrissey is the founder of the 30% Club which now has chapters in 10 countries, at the time of writing this review. She has also undertaken several organisation wide researches on gender disparity. She is currently the head of personal investing at Legal & General.

Ms Morrissey argues — rightly in my view as I wrote in this Quora answer several years ago — that the patriarchal system in today’s workplaces hurts women as well as men.

Using her own experiences as well as research, citations to which are listed towards the end of the book, she has made a strong case for changing the workplace and our idea of work.

Chapter 6 is a valuable read for CEOs, and if as a CEO you read only one thing in this book, read this chapter. Ms Morrissey addresses right away the resentment of the majority who see D&I initiatives as an exercise in political correctness, and who are anxious about positive discrimination. She mentions the ineffectiveness of unconscious bias training, a tool that has gained currency — which I agreed with and have written about in Inc. She rightly points out that the past, well-meaning approaches aren’t effective any more, and citing Iris Bohnet, she makes the case for changing mindsets and work environments, and hence the need for CEOs to being a whole new strategic lens to it, starting first with a look in the mirror about their commitment to building a truly diverse organisation. Andy Haldane’s recruitment challenge that Ms Morrissey mentions is thought provoking. Since reading the book I have tested it on several corporate bigwig friends and watched their puzzlement and then delight at recognising its value. The chapter goes on to discuss mentoring, tutorials and giving innovative thinkers the stage, concluding with a practicable checklist for CEOs.

Chapter 7 is written especially for young girls and boys and is very good in my view. Like me, you may want to share it with the teenagers and youngsters you know too.

Ms Morrissey discusses in the book that cultivating one’s own network is more valuable than relying on recruiters and headhunters, something I would endorse from personal experience.

Ms Morrissey, for all her superior achievements, is still represented poorly by some of the UK’s “newspapers”. “Billion dollar babe” was one such early reference, whereas when she was made Dame, “mother of nine media favourite” was how she was described. This sort of stuff can do a lot of damage. In Chapter 9, Ms Morrissey’s daughter talks about “acting like women” which summarises the challenge of narrowly defined ideas of femininity (and masculinity), and many leadership qualities hitherto aligned with masculinity. She recommends several ways to drive change there e.g. not using the word Diversity, and also discarding use of other loaded words such as “flexible working” in favour of “agile working”.

There were however a few points where I was a little disappointed in the book. The idea of intersectional disadvantages faced by many women and men is discussed briefly but quite underdeveloped. Related to that, I found the discussion on Islamic extremism oddly overdeveloped.

Further, the main focus of women’s career challenges is framed as their role of care giver either to children or to elderly relatives. There has been no attention to the experience of women immigrants, especially women of colour, even when it is a widely known fact the trailing spouses are overwhelmingly women. In my view, the scope of this book and its impact is global not just limited to the UK, where generous visa laws allow spouses to work (who may face other challenges including racism hence my earlier comment re intersectionality). This gap was notable in my view.

I know dozens of women, whose careers were thwarted by overt and covert -isms in London – and elsewhere – at the same time as Ms Morrissey became CEO at Newton Asset Management. The American H4 visa is restrictive to say the least, while American women especially women of colour have experienced the rough end of “processes” for “aliens” in many European countries. One friend of mine, with a double doctorate and a Harvard Master’s had to prove to the Swiss authorities her doctorate was equal to a Swiss Master’s, for instance. Many such women are often forced to become independent consultants and entrepreneurs. Many I know have now been outside the corporate mainstream for almost two decades. They bring rich experience and value to boards but because they do not work for BigCo, a well-meaning organisation such as the 30% Club does not allow them membership or support. This is not a small number of people as evident from the burgeoning ranks of potential apprentices in the Board Apprentice Programme*, which now also has a joint offering with the 30% Club. The scope of the change we need is societal and wholesale, not just in BigCo.

In Chapter 10, however, the proposed Women’s Progress Pyramid goes some way to addressing that by proposing a vision that addresses some of these challenges.

Notwithstanding the limitations as perceived by me, I have already recommended the book to my 40yo sister who is a mid-senior level executive in a multinational, my 23yo niece just 2.5y into her career, and a friend-of-over-30-years who is a founder-CEO and a dad to a really smart 10yo daughter. The book has wide appeal to all those who are thinking about their own careers, their workplaces, their relationships, and their contribution to shaping the world around them through their choices and their advocacy.

It’s a good time to be a girl. And a good time to be a boy.

Because the tide of change in our workplaces and our society may finally allow girls and boys and non-binary persons to express their full humanity, without their potential being thwarted.

It still needs us all to work. If you are short on ideas, this book is for you.

Star rating: 4 out of 5

Usefulness note: Everyone who works in any capacity, inside or outside the home, in a small or big company, male or female or non-binary, would benefit from the approach proposed in the book.

*The Board Apprentice programme surfaced me to the board of JP Morgan US Smaller Co.s Investment Trust (LSE: JUSC) where I am now a non-executive director. Needless to say it took a combination of a woke BigCo and an exceptional chairwoman to make it possible. The programme bridges the gap between BigCo and the tribe of accidental entrepreneurs and other unusual talented people, but it needs more host boards to change their minds on the issue of inclusion.